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more than 40,000 men, and was never in a better condition for war than
at the end of the two years since it first landed in the Chersonese.
Gordon's correspondence contains two or three remarks, giving
characteristic evidence to the strength and extent of this sentiment.

In one passage he says: "We do not, generally speaking, like the
thought of peace until after another campaign. I shall not go to
England, but expect I shall remain abroad for three or four years,
which _individually_ I would sooner spend in war than peace. There is
something indescribably exciting in the former."

Another comment to the same effect is the following: "Suders, the
Russian General, reviewed us and the French army last week. He must
have thought our making peace odd."

Gordon did not obtain any honour or promotion for his Crimean
services. He was included in Sir Harry Jones's list of Engineer
Subalterns who had specially distinguished themselves during the
siege. The French Government, more discerning than his own, awarded
him the Legion of Honour.

The letters from the Crimea are specially interesting for the light
they throw on General Gordon's character. They illustrate better than
anything else he wrote during his career the soldierly side of his
character. The true professional spirit of the man of war peers forth
in every sentence, and his devotion to the details of his work was a
good preparatory course for that great campaign in China where his
engineering skill, not less than his military genius, was so
conspicuously shown. As a subaltern in the Crimea Gordon showed
himself zealous, daring, vigilant, and with that profound national
feeling that an army of Englishmen was the finest fighting force in
the world, combined with an inner conviction that of that army his
kindred Highlanders were the most intrepid and leading cohort. This
was a far more attractive and comprehensible personality than the
other revealed in later days, of the Biblical pedant seeking to
reconcile passing events with ancient Jewish prophecies, and to see in
the most ordinary occurrences the workings of a resistless and
unalterable fate. That was not the true Gordon, but rather the
grafting of a new character on the original stem of Spartan simplicity
and heroism. But to the very end of his career, to the last message
from Khartoum, the old Gordon--the real Gordon, the one who will never
be forgotten--revealed himself just as he was in the trenches befo